Chitwan National Park

So we have spent a great week in southern Nepal staying in the jungle at a basic but nice lodge. We shared our bathroom with a huge spider and many many frogs. The bus ride from Kathmandu to Chitwan took us 10 hours! It should have been 6 hours and travelling on Nepalese busses is not for the fainted hearted either. This was a tourist bus which meant they didn’t over take all that much on the blind bends of the snaking, broken surfaced roads.

The humidity in the park was 90% as it’s a great swamp with a large river flowing through it. We had a great time floating down the river in a dugout canoe watching the crocs slide under the surface of the water only a couple of meters from our little boat.

We had a nice walk through the jungle from the boat and saw no animal life but Danny managed to get leeched, to his horror but when he looked it had dropped off leaving a little round hold an weird teeth marks.

The highlight of the trip really had to be the elephants. There is an elephant breeding centre close by the river where the government supports the breeding of elephants to keep the mahouts in jbs and support the park upkeep. There were a lot of baby elephants with there mothers and we were lucky enough to meet the baby twins who are the only surviving twin elephants to have been born.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMdbL9ILmCo

The highlight of the trip for both me and danny was the elephant bath, where we were collected from the lodge to ride bare back on an adult elephant who took us down to the river and then proceeded to get us as wet as possible. We had great fun washing and climbing on the elephants who was so gental. The Mahoot took great pleasure in soaking us by getting the elephant to dump us in the water as much as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goycqA_Puus

It wasn’t all elephant, we did take a jungle trek (on an elephant) and were lucky enough to see 2 wild Rhino who had come out of the forest to wallow in the newly form mud pools. It was great to get so close to such wild and dangerous creatures. They were completely happy with the elephants and didn’t feel threatened or threaten us.

We did some chilling out as well there was a nice bar at the top of the village next to the river whee you got a beautiful view over the reserve and even some local busking, danny tried to play the local instrument which is a cross between a violin and a guitar. But it sounds like a cats being strangled.

So, we had a great time down there even if I did get a bit of heat stroke. Check out the Youtube links and Facebook Photos

Hazel & Danny

Buddhist temple visit Kathmandu

So, we visited this temple called ‘Swoyambhu’ it’s within walking distant of where we are staying and it’s a little haven of peace in the madness that is Kathmandu. It was very calm and restive up there and the views over the city were amazing. You could almost not hear the traffic J

 

 

This is the stupa of the temple where I walked the prayer wheels to bless our trip

 

 

Us and the views over Kathmandu from either side of the temple

 

 

These prayer flags were strung between the 2 temples on the hilltop, they were amazing as they moved in the breeze

 

 

These are the monkeys that guard the temple grounds

 

Enjoy!

 

We are Alive!

Hello Everyone,

Well we have made it to Kathmandu after some trouble with airports on the way. No problem in heathrow but in Delhi the security decided that Danny's climbing rope has an offensive weapon and took his bag off him and put it in the hold.

This was unfortunate for us as it was Danny's bag that had all the money and cards in it. We we got stuck in Kathmandu airport as we had no money to pay for the Visa entry and no-one in Kathmandu takes cards. It's a cash only country bit of a shock to our UK based system lol.

So Akhil saved our bacon and took Danny out into K-town to get cash while i waited in the airport. Not the best start to our trip.

So Akhil, has let us stay in his house which is amazing it like staying in a wedding cake... i'll post a pic later another time.

Kathmandu is madness nothing works in anyway that we in the west would understand. Its just chaos and out of the madness things just seem to happen.

So next step for us is getting out on a 9 day trek near Langtang followed by a weeks rest before we fly to Tibet to tour round Lhasa and the lakes.

When we've done that we come back to rest before we do the big trek to Annapurna base camp and the we climb a snow capped peak called Thapu Chuli at 5100m. We have our own porters and mountain guide so we should be safe. It will take us 3 days to do the summit and it's all crampons and ice axes all the way.

Anyway battery is failing on the laptop so I'll post this now.